


Life After

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Heist AU [2]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Felon, Second Chances, Starting Over, Suicidal Ideation, antihero, internalized aggression, life after prison, moderate smut, psychological impact of incarceration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-16 13:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7269559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Nick Miller's life after being released from prison for armed robbery. Followup to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7238779/chapters/16434142">"Heist."</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newgirlystuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newgirlystuff/gifts).



> Hat tip to Aly and Newgirlystuff for the idea. Man, this story got away from me. "Heist" was always supposed to be a one-off (just me experimenting with Evil!Nick), but Felon!Nick ended up being a really interesting version of Nick Miller. 
> 
> It's a bumpy ride though, folks. Coming back from prison is never easy.
> 
> *****Trigger warnings for suicidal ideation and internalized aggression that becomes externalized violence (psychological impact of incarceration)*****

And he’s out.

20 years in, on to supervised release for the next 10.

He was a young man when he went in _(25, so damn young)_ , but he’s approaching middle age now that he’s out again. As he follows the prison guards toward the front gate, he thinks about all the things that he could have done on the Outside if he hadn’t thrown 20 years of his life away making the choices he made. It makes him feel incredibly young and incredibly old all at the same time.

He pauses at the gate of the prison, open to him for the first time. He glances behind him. He’s scared that he’ll make the same bad decisions once he’s out there that landed him here in the first place. He’s pretty much starting from scratch again, which is both liberating and terrifying. He takes a deep breath and steps through.

Jess is waiting for him in the parking lot, leaning against the driver’s side door of her car. When she sees him, she runs to him and throws her arms around him. He wraps his arms around her. For the first time he gets to hold her against him. He closes his eyes and breathes her in. _Freedom._

\---

She drives him to her apartment. It’s not in a very good neighborhood. It doesn’t really matter to him because pretty much anywhere in the free world is a step up from where he’s been, but he worries about her safety. She says nothing has happened to her since she’s lived there though.

When he steps inside the apartment, he goes to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, but looks down at his wet feet when he turns on the tap. A pool of water is spilling out from under the sink. She says he has to use the sink in the bathroom because the kitchen sink always leaks if you don’t turn it on in exactly the right way. She says her landlord told her he would fix it. He asks her when the landlord told her that and she looks away from him and says six months ago. He tells her to get him a toolbox. She says he doesn’t have to do that, but he insists. He fixes the kitchen sink so it doesn’t leak and then he looks around the apartment for all the other broken things: the light switch that always shocks you when you turn it on, the window that is perpetually stuck in the “up” position, the shower that won’t turn on unless you turned on the faucet at the bathroom sink at the same time. Afterwards, he lies on his back in the middle of the living room surrounded by tools, exhausted but happy that he got to do those things for her, got to bring something good into her life.


	2. First Full Day of Freedom

He got released on a Friday so he has the weekend off before he has to go job hunting on Monday.

He sleeps on the couch and gets up at 6AM like he does in prison. He can’t help it; it’s what he has done for the last 20 years and he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon. 

He gets showered and changed and then makes breakfast for Jess. Jess hears him in the kitchen so she gets up too, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She says that he could have slept in since it’s Saturday and he didn’t have to do that, but he says he wanted to. They eat breakfast together and it feels nice, domestic, like something they have always done together. 

She washes the dishes and he helps her dry them. She says she always goes grocery shopping on Saturday morning, but he doesn’t have to come with her; he can just hang around the apartment and relax. He wants to go with her though. The idea of staying inside all day on his first full day of freedom makes him feel antsy.

\---

He pushes the cart and follows her around the grocery store. He always hated grocery shopping before he got sent to prison. It felt so mundane and boring back then, something that took up a lot of time he would rather be using somewhere else. But he really likes it now. 

He marvels at being able to make choices again. There are so many choices. He just stands in front of the cereal aisle and reads all the boxes. Jess smiles and says he can get whatever he wants, but he doesn’t even fucking know half of them. When did cereal get so damn fancy? She says she always liked Lucky Charms and now they have Chocolate Lucky Charms for whatever insane reason so he gets that because that seems like something that shouldn’t exist. His pathetic imagination would never dream that up in a million years. The fact that it is real reminds him that he is actually free.

\---

They get lunch at a diner.

He is overwhelmed by all the choices again. She gets a grilled cheese and tomato soup so he follows her lead and gets the same thing. When he takes his first bite, he remembers that he really liked that as a kid. It’s a weird thing to forget but it feels like that was someone else’s life.

\---

She drives them to Griffith Park. They walk the well-worn park paths among the happy families enjoying the sunshine on a perfect Saturday afternoon.

Being outside without seeing a barbed wire fence around him still feels foreign. It feels like he’s going to get in trouble for some reason. He never tried breaking out when he was in prison, just kept his head down and did his time, but it feels like that’s what he’s done. Being free to walk around unrestricted outside feels so good that it should be illegal.

They sit down at a park bench overlooking a playground. She gets up to get them soft pretzels. He watches the children playing and thinks fleetingly of his younger brother Jamie. He can’t help missing him and feels a lump in his throat. He pushes the feelings and memories down when Jess comes back.

\---

They go back to her apartment and she cooks him dinner. He tries to help but she says to let her pay him back for cooking breakfast so he just sits at the dining room table and watches her work. She makes him pot roast and it tastes like the best thing he’s ever eaten.

\---

They watch movies together in the living room until it gets really late. She’s trying to get him caught up on all the pop culture he missed out on while he was in prison. It’s a little overwhelming for him to process it all though so they just end up watching stuff he is familiar with, all his old favorite movies: _The Maltese Falcon_ , _Caddyshack_ , _A Christmas Story_.

They are sitting on the living room couch sharing a throw over their legs with a bowl of popcorn in between them. During one of the movies, she reaches over to hold his hand and he lets her. They fall asleep that way with their heads leaning together, backlit by the television screen.


	3. Running into the Ocean

She takes him to the beach on Sunday.

He feels like he’s five again, going to the beach for the first time. Nervous excitement runs through his veins. He keeps bouncing his leg to get rid of his restless energy on the drive there.

\---

Once they get to the beach, he helps her unload the car. He helps her set up their beach towels and a large yellow beach umbrella at the edge of the water.

They help put sunscreen on each other’s backs. He likes touching her but he isn’t used to it yet, isn’t used to her being able to touch him back either. It feels strange and wonderful. The most they ever got to do when he was Inside was hold hands, maybe a brief kiss or hug at the beginning or end of the visit. Sometimes when he pissed off the guards for whatever reason, they didn’t even let him do that.

\---

He stands at the edge of the ocean and feels the wet sand between his toes. He feels the sun beating down on his back. The surf comes in and splashes over his feet. All these sensations he thought he would never feel again when he was Inside. _Heaven on Earth._

He looks over at Jess lying on her stomach on her beach towel in her red polka-dot bikini. She’s watching him propped up on her elbow with her chin resting in her hand and a sweet smile on her face. Her eyes are blue like the ocean before him. He thinks she’s the prettiest girl on the whole beach. 

\---

He always liked the beach when he was younger but he was always afraid of swimming in the ocean. Afraid of the unknown: _riptides and sharks and sea monsters._

He isn’t afraid anymore though. 

He runs into the surf and dives in. He swims out until he can’t feel ground under his feet before turning around and swimming back to shore. 

He collapses on his back next to Jess on the beach towels, breathing hard from the exertion. His lungs burn and his muscles ache because he hasn’t been swimming in a long time, but the pain feels good to him.

_The feeling of being alive._

\---

He helps her look for unusual seashells and beach glass to add to her collection. He likes that she is the type of person who collects those things, collects memories.

They eat junky beach food: hot dogs and cheese fries and lobster rolls and churros and sno-cones. She pulls out some cut-up fruit from the cooler she brought and he smiles and thinks that’s what defines her in a nutshell.

They build sandcastles and he daydreams about what it would be like to visit a real castle with her someday when his supervised release is up. Hell, he’d like to just be able to travel outside the state of California with her. To be able to just hop in the car with her and take a road trip to somewhere they have never been, just him and her, and not have to tell anybody about it. 

She stretches out on her stomach to sunbathe and he’s happy to just lie next to her and watch all the other beachgoers wandering to and fro, playing and splashing in the ocean. 

They stay until the sun dips below the horizon.

He falls asleep on the ride home with the sound of the surf in his ears. 


	4. Job Hunt

He’s trying his damndest to get a job, but he knows no one wants to work with a convicted felon, especially not one whose had his mugshot splashed all over the news for armed robbery and being an accessory to murder. 

His job search drags on for months.

\---

Every morning after Jess leaves for work and right before he has to leave to try and get someone, anyone, to talk to him about a job, he puts his hands on either side of the bathroom sink and looks in the mirror at his reflection.

Every morning he says to himself, “This is the day your life is going to change.” 

He thinks maybe if he says it enough, one day he’ll be able to believe it. 

One day it will actually be true.

\---

He wears a suit with a tie and tucks in his shirt and has all his resumes printed on fancy paper, but on every application he has to check _'yes'_ on the question _'Have you ever been convicted of a felony?'_ and he knows where those applications go. Trash bin before it ever reaches a real person. He smiles wryly at the fact that they always leave him a space on the application to give him a chance to try and explain it away, to try and minimize his personal responsibility, to try and spin it in a positive light even though no one will even read the words. He thinks that’s what re-entering normal society is. Pretending the world isn’t ugly when it is.

When he does manage to get the rare interview, he sees that flash of recognition on the interviewers' faces when they meet him in person. They know what he did because his name and mugshot were on every single news station, printed in every single newspaper. People have good memories for that sort of thing. He holds out his hand for them to shake even though he knows it’s already over by then. They give him some rudimentary questions to be polite, but he can see they just want to shove him out the door. He gives himself a sardonic smile and thinks it’s good he’s out in the world meeting new people who aren’t Jess at least.

He just wants a chance, just a single interview where someone can see him as a real person, someone who still has potential left, and not define him by a mistake he made 20 years ago. He knows it was a huge life-changing mistake, but isn’t 20 years of his life enough to wipe the slate clean? He’s sorry for what he did; he’d take it back if he could, but he can’t. He’s trying to make good on his life, trying to make up for it, and he knows he’ll be paying for it until the day he dies and he accepts that. But he can’t _do_ anything without having a job first. Society talks about “reforming” inmates and making them “productive members of society” but they want to keep punishing them at the same time. He’s paid his debt to society in the eyes of the law but not in the eyes of society itself.

\---

After a million rejections, he can’t help thinking fleetingly of being a bank robber again, even though he knows that is a really dumb idea. It's just something that floats through his mind when he’s still for too long, when he’s lying awake in bed at night trying to shut his brain off and go to sleep and it's continually playing back the long string of rejections that happened to him that day, that week, that month, that year. It just always felt good to be doing something instead of nothing, even though he knows stealing is wrong, that people get hurt because you want to take something that isn't yours, because you think you deserve someone else’s money more than they do. 

He thinks you never really leave prison once you go Inside. It’s just a different prison Outside once they let you go.

\---

He’s broke and useless to her. He fixes things around the house and makes sure dinner is always on the table when she gets home from a long day of teaching. He tries to clean up after himself and keep the apartment neat since it still feels like _her_ place instead of _their_ place. It doesn’t seem like enough though. He doesn’t like spending all her money. He wants to contribute, wants to be something good in her life since she gave 20 years of her Outside life to him. 

He can’t be dragging her down now that he’s Outside too. 

\---

One afternoon, he tells Jess he is going to pick up some milk from the grocery store, but he drives her car to a local bank downtown instead. He parks outside the bank and just watches the people entering and exiting the bank through the front glass doors like he has done dozens of times before with Jamie. He’s feeling that desperation press against him again the way it used to when he was losing his bar and his family was falling apart. Going back to prison feels inevitable sometimes. He imagines himself back again, doing those bad things. He still remembers the plans he made with his brother, the familiar routine. 

He doesn’t do it; he just thinks about doing it, but he thinks that’s just as bad. 

He sits there for half an hour before he drives to the grocery store. He picks up some milk to make what he told Jess actually true. 

\---

He doesn’t see his family anymore. They aren’t on speaking terms. They disowned him, blamed him for screwing up the robbery, blamed him for killing his father and his brother. They didn’t look at him when the judge read the verdict that took 20 years of his life away. The last time he saw his Ma was when the bailiff cuffed him and took him off to be processed; he didn’t even see her face, just the slumped shoulders of her back as she was leaving the courtroom. No one from his family ever visited him in prison. No one from his old life ever came to see him when he was in there. No one ever visited him at all, just Jess.

\---

He tries to think about what he would have done differently. He didn’t want his brother or father to die. He didn’t want any of the guards to die. He couldn’t have just stopped it; his brother was right, he was too far in. Maybe that time in the hospital. He could have said no. He thought his father was dying so he said yes, even though on some level he always hated him for doing all that stuff during his childhood, for never being home because he was always off trying to pull some scam, always looking for fast money, always trying to rip people off. But he still loved him too, so it was always going to be yes. 

Everyone that died was always going to end up dying that way because of him. 

\---

He finally gets a job at a shitty dive bar called The Griffin. _Dishwasher. Minimum wage._ The bar manager Mike blinks when he sees the checkmark next to the felony box but so many people have quit on him that he doesn’t care about that anymore. He just wants a guy that shows up and Nick has always been that guy. When Mike tells him he has the job if he shows up tomorrow morning at 9AM, Nick is in shock for a second before he reaches over to shake Mike’s hand and thanks him profusely. He’s still in shock as he walks out of the bar and into the parking lot. He opens the door to sit in the driver’s seat of Jess’s car. He breaks down and cries in the parking lot before he can pull himself together and drive himself home. 

_A chance._

\---

He’s grateful for the job, but it’s still really humbling because he used to own his own business. And yeah, his bar did go under, but most businesses do. He knows the statistics. _8 out of 10 fail within the first 18 months. 96% fail within 10 years._ It’s all that went through his head while he was trying to make it work, trying to save his bar. But he still ran it. He knows the bar business inside and out: he can do the books, he knows how to handle employees, he knows how to negotiate with the vendors, he knows how to mix all the drinks. But they won’t let him do anything but be a busboy washing dishes in the back. It gets boring sometimes, but he’s trying to focus on the good. A stable job, a stable paycheck. A convicted felon can’t ask for more than that. 

\---

One day some of his dad’s old gambling buddies come into the bar. He sees their flash of recognition when they see him bussing tables. Tran comes over to talk to him. Get-rich-quick schemes again: _Insurance fraud. Fake slip-and-falls. Counterfeit lottery tickets._ He tells them he can’t get involved, but they shrug good-naturedly and say they just thought they would offer since he was 'Walt's boy.' They talk and joke around with him like an old friend; they don't hold his past mistakes against him. They buy drinks and toast his dead brother and dead father. "It happens," they shrug. They call his mistakes 'collateral damage' for trying to live in an unfair world. _Eat or be eaten. Get when the getting is good._ They all have skeletons in their closet; most of them have been in prison before too. They say, "Anyone who doesn't have skeletons in their closet is either a chump or a liar." He likes being around familiar faces and being treated like a real person for once, but he’s wary about being drawn in again. Exploited. He thinks about Jess, letting her down. He can’t be their fall guy.

He returns to the back of the kitchen to avoid temptation and continues washing the endless stream of dishes and glassware from the bar. He imagines every item he cleans is actually cleaning off a little bit of the dirt and sin and badness from his life. Every clean glass is making up for every bad thing that he ever did a little bit at a time, until one day it will make him good again, will make him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for Evil!Tran in this universe.


	5. Learning You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****Trigger warning for internalized aggression that becomes externalized violence (psychological impact of incarceration)*****

He’s trying to learn her outside of prison. It still doesn’t feel like he’s allowed to touch her, like he’s still inside prison and bound by all their rules. He doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable by coming on too strong so he doesn’t touch her unless she touches him first. 

\---

He sleeps on the couch for the first few months, but he eventually works his way up to sleeping next to her in bed. They lie next to each other, not touching. He’s just learning to be in her space, learning what it feels like to have the presence of someone next to him. 

\---

One afternoon, he takes a nap in her room when he gets home from work and she goes to shake him awake for dinner. He forgets where he is and she ends up on her back on the bed with his hands wrapped around her throat, before he remembers and immediately releases her. She sits up in bed coughing and rubbing at her neck where his hands were, trying to catch her breath. He gets up from the bed and goes into the furthest corner of the room away from her. He sits down on the ground with his knees drawn up to his chest and his trembling hands running through his hair telling her he’s sorry over and over again in a shaky, distraught voice. He can still see the look of fear in her eyes as she was pinned underneath him, feel her rapid pulse through his hands, her looking at the man he truly is. She comes over and hugs him to her. She says _it’s okay, you didn’t mean to, it was an accident_. She forgives him because she’s _her_ , even though he thinks she shouldn’t. He thinks he shouldn’t live with her anymore, but she convinces him to stay. 

She learns not to touch him when he’s sleeping. It never meant anything good in prison; it reminds his subconscious brain of getting dragged out of bed and getting beaten down for some perceived slight when the guards' backs were turned. He has to unlearn it. 

\---

He’s watching her get dressed for work, standing in the open bedroom doorway leaning against the doorframe, his eyes following her. She comes over and cups his face and kisses him like she has done every morning since that first Monday after he got out. It always makes him feel sad for some reason, like he can feel all the years he could have lived with her, all the years she lived Outside without him, all alone. Their foreheads briefly touch before she steps back and he watches her leave for work. 

He has to get used to her touching him.

\--- 

Jess has been right beside him ever since he went in 20 years ago, so for all intents and purposes he thinks of her as his wife. He didn’t want to get married to her on the Inside though. That seemed wrong somehow, even though he thinks she would have said yes if he had asked her to marry him while he was in there. He just didn’t want to associate any of her with prison at all. She was always the angel coming in and bringing joy, however temporary to his life, before walking back out of the prison clean and untouched by its human misery.

Now that he’s out, he tries to imagine getting her a ring and seeing her in a white dress and it never quite seems to fit. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to be the guy for her at the other end of the aisle, even though he can’t imagine her not being in his life, can’t imagine his life without her in it. 

He wants her to be able to leave him and marry someone else if she wants to. It seems like she would have tons of better options out there other than him, but he’s grateful for whatever time she wants to give him. 

She has always been something good for him to hold on to in his life. Even when it was the worst it could ever possibly be Inside and he could no longer even imagine what the Outside was like anymore, he could still picture her so he knew it still existed, that good things still existed in the world. 

\---

His shift is almost over and Jess is sitting at a stool at the bar waiting to drive him home. He sees her talking to two guys at the bar as he is bussing his last tables. He feels a surge of jealousy within him, but he doesn’t say anything about it because he thinks she never should have stayed with him for 20 years and kept herself from having a life, being someone’s wife, all of it. If she wants to flirt with strangers at a bar, he should let her. He thinks maybe they should just be roommates or possibly friends, but not be in a relationship with each other, if you can call what they are to each other ‘a relationship’ at all. 

When he walks over to her, she introduces the two guys as her old roommates Winston and Schmidt. 

Winston is a cop and that makes Nick wary but he says he’s from Chicago too so that makes Nick like him a bit more. Winston isn’t like any cop Nick has ever met. He’s a really mellow dude; he doesn’t seem to have an angry bone in his body, unlike the corrections officers who used to beat Nick in prison for looking at them funny or for being ‘insubordinate’ because he wasn’t being appropriately groveling enough to them. Winston talks about how dope birdshirts are and how he likes those fruity drinks with the umbrellas in them. He also talks about how much he loves his partner and fiancée Aly. Nick thinks if he had a friend like Winston growing up, maybe he would have a job and a life he could be proud of right now too. One of the big four: cop, lawyer, doctor, teacher. He would probably be married to Jess right now and been able to give her a good life where he hadn’t missed 20 years of it.

Nick can’t really figure Schmidt out. He seems to have a good job ( _Marketing Associate at Associated Strategies_ as Schmidt keeps saying repeatedly) and he’s decent looking. He doesn’t know why Jess is with him instead of this Schmidt. He kind of talks too much though, hits on all the women, so maybe that’s why. Schmidt calls him Nicholas a lot, which he’s not sure he likes. Schmidt keeps looking at his phone like he’s expecting a call or text from someone and his face looks open and sad then. Nick thinks that’s the real version of Schmidt and not the party animal-slash-douchebag he is pretending to be. Jess pats his hand and says Cece will come around eventually. Nick thinks Schmidt can’t be all bad; he just seems to be a guy looking for someone to love him like Nick was way back when he was 25, before he met Jess.

He nods at Winston and Schmidt in his work apron and goes to the back of the kitchen to finish washing the last dishes and glassware in the sink for his shift. He can’t help feeling a curl of shame at her having to introduce him to her friends like this. He pushes it down because he knows it’s an honest job, an honest day’s hard work. This shitty dishwasher job is still better than where he’s been and he has no reason to be ashamed of it.

He goes back out to the bar. When Mike isn’t looking, he puts cash in the register and makes Winston and Schmidt two tumblers of the perfect old-fashioned. He gives them a cocky half-smile when they each take a sip and look back at him with stunned expressions. He likes breaking people’s expectations of him. 

\---

One day he goes to Jess’s school to surprise her for lunch.

He sees her down the empty hallway talking to another male teacher. Nick hangs back a bit because he doesn’t want to bother her if she’s working, but the look on Jess’s face makes him pause. She seems upset and the two of them appear to be arguing over something but are trying to be quiet and not draw attention to themselves. The male teacher puts his hand on Jess’s hip and tries to bring her close to him to kiss her. Jess turns her head away and tries to push his hand off her. 

Nick’s anger burns hot. He runs over to them, grabs the male teacher by the collar, and slams him into the lockers. He punches the lockers near the guy’s head. The guy shrinks back in fear. Nick sees that flash of recognition; the guy knows who he is, knows his story from the news. Nick thinks that the one good thing about being a criminal is being able to inspire instant fear when you need to. It’s a kind of primal respect from people, no matter how ill-gotten it is. Nick is really the one that should be afraid though since he has to be on his best behavior for his probation officer. Can’t get any more citations or they’ll send him back, not even a parking ticket, let alone an intimidation or assault charge. He really could see going back to prison for hurting this guy; he thinks it would be worth it. Jess pulls on his arm though so he backs off. “Don’t you ever fucking touch her again,” he growls low and quiet, voice full of dangerous menace, eyes full of cold malice. The teacher scrambles down the hallway away from them. 

Nick turns to Jess and cups her cheek with his hand in a tender, possessive gesture. They don’t say anything. They just gaze into each other’s eyes for a few long minutes. She blinks and the moment is broken. He reaches down to take her hand and they walk out to the front parking lot of the school with her hand in his. 

When they are sitting in her car and driving to a nearby restaurant to get lunch, she tells him not to show up to the school anymore in case he gets in trouble, but he knows she was glad he was there.

\---

He likes privacy. All the quiet things he never appreciated before he went to prison. Being able to be with her and not have everyone constantly watching them, stealing all the memories they were trying to build together. Having to keep everything he felt for her hidden so it couldn’t be used against him Inside. They had nothing Inside so it was dangerous to love things. Those were the only things other people could take from you. 

He slowly allows himself to be vulnerable again.

\---

One night while they are lying in bed next to each other, not touching, he turns from being on his back to being on his side to face her. The room is dimly lit by the moonlight streaming in through the window, but she can still see the molten brown of his eyes. They are soft with affection for her. He reaches over and lightly presses his fingertips into the skin above her heart. 

Five pinpoints of heat, of connection, between them. 


	6. Touch

He’s trying to let himself touch her, trying to tell himself it’s okay, but he can feel there is a wall there in his mind. He can touch her if she touches him first but it’s hard for him to make the choice to touch her on his own. It still feels unnatural, like something he shouldn’t be allowed to do. He keeps thinking he’ll hurt her. He can go up to a certain point but then he has to back off. 

She is patient and tries not to push him, waits for him. Lets him move at his own pace.

\---

They are both standing at the kitchen sink after finishing the dinner dishes. She always washes and he always dries; he likes the familiar routine. It’s cozy and intimate, like something normal couples do. He wants to have all these things they share: routines and habits and little in-jokes, a whole private language that only they know. He thinks it’s not the big moments that define a relationship but these small moments that no one else gets to see. Moments that can only come from sharing a life together with someone else. 

She takes off her dishwashing gloves and turns to walk away from him, but he touches her arm. She turns back to look at him. They are standing with their feet pointed toward each other. _A guy’s feet point at what he wants._ Her best friend Cece told her that when they were teenagers and it was just something silly that always stuck with her. She looks up into his face. They gaze into each other’s eyes for what feels like an eternity. His face is open and unguarded in that moment. His expressive eyes tell her an entire story, everything he can’t say but feels down to the marrow of his bones, the core of his being. His intense gaze burns into her. She feels her breathing start to speed up. He reaches out and very gently cups her face and leans in to kiss her. It’s the first time he has done that, the first time he has reached out for her, the first time he has chosen to kiss her first. Usually it’s her that reaches out for him. 

His lips press softly against hers, tender and sweet. She’s wanted him to do that for a long time and she feels the warmth spreading out from her heart that he trusts her enough to do that now, letting her in. She feels her visceral desire for him flare up from somewhere deep inside her. She pushes up into him to deepen the kiss. Her hands slip under his shirt and wander along the bare skin of his back, feeling him. He pulls away from her when she does that though. He shakes his head at her. _He can’t; not yet._

He presses his mouth to hers once more in apology. Afterwards, they remain close together, their foreheads touching. His eyes are closed but hers are open. Her hands go up to cover his hands, still cupping her face. She squeezes them so that he knows she understands. 

\---

Sometimes he’ll just stop her randomly throughout the day and put his hands on her. _On her hips, on her shoulders, along her back._ Just touching her, not pushing things further. He is pensive and quiet as his hands span the length of her. She’ll indulge him, remaining still and leaning into his touch. His hands remain on her for several minutes before he lets her go. She’ll step back from him and look into his face and his eyes will be unreadable. 

She thinks those are the bad days when he needs to make sure she is real, that he can touch her now whenever he wants and that his freedom isn’t some delirious fever dream that he is having Inside where he was all alone without her. 

\---

One night after cooking dinner and placing his plate in front of him, she finds him looking up at her. His chair is half-turned towards her, his body angled towards her. He places his hands on her hips and brings her close to him so she is standing between his legs. He leans his head against her chest. Her hands come to rest lightly on his head, her fingers pressing into his hair. They share a quiet moment after a long day. 

He feels tendrils of want for her unfurling in his gut. 

\---

One night he finally allows his body to curl around her in bed, curling himself into her. He spoons himself to her, his arms wrapping around her and bringing her close to him. She can feel his warm presence all down her back, the ghost of his breath on her neck. His shy exploring hands go up under her pajama top, memorizing the feel of her. The want for him burns in her. 

\---

They are sitting on the couch watching a movie. She is sitting horizontal to him with her legs spread across his lap. She is wearing a knee-length skirt with no tights. His hands are resting on her bare legs. He starts unconsciously stroking her legs. She turns from the screen to look into his face and they spend a few minutes just watching each other. The air feels charged between them. He leans in to kiss her and suddenly he has her pinned down underneath him on the couch and they’re making out. The pressure of his body on hers feels delicious; his hands are everywhere. His kisses are sloppy and desperate but she likes it; she can feel his want for her, feel him letting go. He doesn’t let things go further than second base though. 

They lie together on the couch afterwards. She is nestled in the corner of the couch with her body stretched out and he is half lying on top of her, his head resting against her chest. She thinks he is listening to her heartbeat. She strokes his hair. 

\---

She’s trying to be patient but sometimes it frustrates her. She just wants him to touch her, for them to be a normal couple who do that without having to think about it. She’s waited so long for him and she wants him. He keeps pulling back from her when things get too hot and heavy though. It’s like he’s waiting for something. 

\---

It starts to make her insecure. She knows most men think of her as more “cute” than “sexy.” She thinks maybe she should change to be more like those women in the magazines she sees at the grocery store filled with tips about “pleasing your man.” She can’t help comparing herself to those perfect, plastic women. 

She drops her knee-length vintage skirts and modest sweaters for cleavage-baring tops and short, skintight skirts around the house. She wears heavy makeup: dark smoky eyes and ruby red lips. She starts wearing lingerie to bed instead of her usual pajama sets. It all seems to have the opposite effect on him though. He starts withdrawing into himself away from her. He doesn’t touch her or reach out to kiss her as much. He goes back to lying beside her in bed, not touching her. It seems to make him uncomfortable. 

When she stops, he goes back to touching her and choosing to kiss her and spooning her to him in bed. “I just like you, Jess,” he whispers to her. 

\---

Every week he gets a little farther, getting closer to her. And one day he finally can.

She is sitting up in bed reading. He’s lying awake next to her, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. She puts a bookmark in her novel and puts the novel on her nightstand. She turns to him and gives him a kiss on the cheek before turning off the lamp by her bedside. She turns to her side and he spoons her to him like he usually does. This night though he touches her shoulder and she turns to him. He’s propped up on his elbow looking down at her. His eyes are dark and intense in a way she hasn’t seen before. He leans in to kiss her. He starts to undress her, unbuttoning her top so she is bare beneath him. She’s just wearing one of her regular pajama outfits but he seems to like it. He runs his hands over her body, over her bare skin. The feel of his hands on her is intoxicating. He starts pressing kisses into her skin, down the length of her. She arches up into him. They help each other push down their pajama bottoms. Her gasp when he pushes inside of her is everything he didn’t know he wanted. 

Afterwards, holding her close to him in the warm afterglow, he finally starts to feel human again. 


	7. Hometown Reunion

He’s been out on supervised release for a while living with Jess, just him and her trying to figure out their regular lives together. She wants him to meet her family, but he’s unsure. People weren’t that crazy about him when he was just a regular bartender, even before he decided to go on a crime spree with his brother. He can see it’s important to her though so he puts his arms around her, hugs her close, and tells her he’ll try for her.

\---

He has a stable job and he’s been staying out of trouble so he thinks the Court will approve him to fly to Portland with her. It doesn’t feel quite real when he actually does get approved though. He stands there in wide-eyed shock for a few seconds when his probation officer, Big Bob, tells him the news. Big Bob smiles at him and tells him to enjoy his furlough. He’d hug Big Bob if he could but he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to touch his probation officer. 

Good things don’t tend to happen in his life, but Jess seems to make them happen for him. 

\---

He and Jess are sitting in their rental car outside her childhood home. He’s dressed in a suit and tie with his shirt neatly tucked in. Jess told him that he didn’t have to get dressed up and it was just a casual get-together with her close family and friends from Portland, but he feels like he should take advantage of whatever “brownie points” he can get. His palms are sweating and he’s glad he’s wearing a suit jacket because he can feel the sweat pooling at his back; he hopes he doesn’t sweat right through his shirt. He can feel the anxiety crawling under his skin, hoping he makes a good impression and doesn’t embarrass Jess. She reaches over and takes his hand. She squeezes it and he squeezes her hand back. He’ll be okay if she’s there. They get out of the car and they walk towards her childhood home hand in hand. 

\---

He’s trying to be likeable and polite, but he knows that look in their eyes. Filling in his story before they even get a chance to know him.

He can tell her dad, Bob, doesn’t like him. He gets it. He wouldn’t want his daughter being anywhere near someone like him, let alone in a relationship with someone like him. Bob is warm and friendly towards everyone else at the party though. He tells funny anecdotes about what Jess was like growing up. He thinks if he had a dad like Bob who was always there and took him to summer vacations at the beach and camping in the mountains, he wouldn’t have done what he did so he still likes Bob anyway even if Bob doesn’t like him back. 

Her mom, Joan, is more welcoming. Kind of hippy dippy, but that’s okay with him. She keeps telling him how his aura is purple but that seems to be a good thing, so he doesn’t mind. She keeps trying to feed him, plying him with homemade cookies and brownies and cupcakes, and it makes him miss his Ma. He thinks about Christmas in Chicago and sitting in the kitchen watching her cook, all the delicious smells wafting to him from the stove. She would tell him stories about all their crazy relatives and let him sneak bites of dessert before dinner. He wishes he could bring Jess home to meet his family in Chicago. He longs for connections to the world that he could offer up to her too, a good life and a history he could invite her into. Instead all he can give her are the jagged, broken shards of himself with no place to belong to out in the universe. 

\---

He meets Jess’s older sister, Abby. Abby is the fake rebellious type of person. She thinks she likes danger and “bad boys” but she has never really been in trouble with the law outside of a couple of arrests for disorderly conduct. Kind of a poser. 

Abby is bold where everyone else has danced around the elephant in the room. She asks him what he went in for. He looks her directly in the eyes and tells her he went in for armed robbery. A simple, true statement of fact, but he doesn’t elaborate. He’s always honest about his past because it seems wrong to whitewash what he did to make other people like him, like he isn’t paying back his debts to the families he destroyed. He’ll also be honest about the details if people press him about it, but he won’t offer them up himself. It’s not exactly a conversation starter. There is usually an awkward silence afterwards, people trying to be polite but not really knowing what to say, not wanting to know him any further after learning about the facts that have defined his whole life for over 20 years.

He thinks Abby expected him to be macho and tough but he’s usually just watchful and quiet. He spent enough time in jail pretending to be that type of hyper-masculine and aggressive person to protect himself; he doesn’t want to bring that Outside into his real life. When she realizes he isn’t that type of person, she awkwardly backs away from him and leaves him alone, which is fine with him. He doesn’t like playing the role of what people expect him to be.

Sometimes he just wants to yell at other people and tell them that he’s still a person, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea. Normal people don’t do that. People can just see you’re normal, just like they can see you’re broken. It’s just this thing that lives inside you that people pick up on. So this is what he is now, not a person but something lesser…a felon. _Once a criminal, always a criminal._

\---

He meets Jess’s best friend Cece. She regards him with suspicion initially but relaxes when she sees how much Jess likes him. Cece is a tall, leggy model. A lot of guys hit on her at the party. She’s attractive, but Nick isn’t attracted to her at all. He doesn’t really know how to talk to other women anymore, besides Jess, so he avoids her. He remembers having a long-term girlfriend named Caroline before he went to prison, before he met Jess, but she left him when his bar started going under. He remembers they fought a lot. He thinks he thought he loved her, but it pales in comparison to what he feels for Jess. 

\---

He’s trying to mingle with other people at the party so Jess has time to talk to all of her family and friends on her own without him constantly hanging on to her, but he doesn’t really feel comfortable around other people if Jess isn’t there, doesn’t feel comfortable with people other than Jess. 

He thinks she knows because she keeps coming back over to hold his hand and run interference so that he doesn’t have to make much small talk with other people on his own.

\---

He sees Jess talking to a shaggy, long-haired guy. She smiles politely at him, but Nick can see it doesn’t reach her eyes. Later she comes over and tells him that was her ex-boyfriend Spencer. Evidently they were together for six years and he cheated on her, but they said they would remain friends after the breakup since they were mutual family friends first and they didn't want to force their family and friends to pick sides. 

Nick can feel a surge of anger rise within him that makes him want to punch that cheating douchebag in the face, but he takes a deep breath and makes little fists with his toes like they told him to do in group therapy when he gets really angry, but can’t do anything about it. It sounds dumb, but it actually does help. His anger recedes from a roaring inferno to a slow-burning rage in his gut; his rational mind resumes control over his Neanderthal lizard brain. He thinks Spencer still had Jess for six good years, even though he hurt her. But it’s not like Nick hasn’t hurt her too. Does the sharp, sudden pain of cheating hurt more than the 20 years of pain Nick put her through coming to visit him in that human hellhole? Cheating hurts but you can leave that cheating asshole; the scars eventually heal and you can rebuild your life, move on, not waste another second of your life thinking about that person. Jess almost died because of him. She wouldn’t have even been anywhere near that warehouse that day if it wasn’t for him, if she had never met him. She also wouldn’t have given 20 years of her life waiting around for him when she should have been out there living them.

He thinks maybe a cheating boyfriend with a clean record is still better than a loyal boyfriend without one. 

\---

He sees Jess talking to a tall, handsome guy. He overhears that the tall, handsome guy is a doctor named Sam. Nick thinks that Jess should probably be in a relationship with someone like that. Sam keeps finding excuses to touch her and he thinks Sam likes her. Jess laughs at something Sam says and Nick feels a sharp stabbing pain in his chest. He doesn’t go over there to say anything though; Nick thinks Jess should be free to fall in love with someone like Sam, to fall in love with someone who really deserves her. 

Nick quietly leaves the party and goes upstairs. 

\---

Nick sits by himself on the bed in Jess’s old childhood bedroom. He looks at the photos on her desk. A whole timeline of Jess. Her looking cute in a pink tutu at a dance recital when she was eight. Her in her awkward phase in high school, large blue Bambi eyes and a faint smile on her face, standing beside tall, statuesque Cece and shyly looking away from the camera. Her in her cap and gown holding her diploma at her high school graduation with her beaming parents beside her. Her standing in front of her suitcase at the airport, face flushed with excitement, moving away from home for the first time. Birthdays and Christmases and Fourth of Julys spent surrounded by people who loved her.

She is sunny and smiling in all the pictures, radiantly shining with so much potential and life. She looks like she had a pretty good childhood, a pretty good life before she ever met him. 

He looks back towards the doorway of the bedroom and Jess is standing there looking back at him. “There you are,” she says brightly. “I was wondering where you went; I missed you.” She comes to sit next to him on the bed and holds his hand.

Looking into the middle distance he asks her bluntly, “Why are you with me, Jess?”

She reaches out and places a hand on his cheek to turn his face so he’ll look at her. She looks into his eyes and replies, “Do you believe in fate, Nick? I just have this feeling I was always supposed to meet you. I don’t remember my life before you, not really. There were things I did, relationships I’d been in, but I think I was always waiting for you, even when you weren’t in prison. After I met you, even knowing all the things you did, I couldn’t stand the idea of you fading away in there, coming back out to nothing. I know you did some bad things but I still believe you’re a good person. I like having you in my life. I like waking up in the morning next to you and knowing you’ll be there when I come home at night. When I’m with you, you make me feel safe and loved. It just feels like we _fit_ together. My life wouldn’t feel complete without you in it.” 

He gazes back at her absorbing her words, letting all the nice things she said about him wash over him. He doesn’t know about fate. He still remembers what it felt like the first time he touched her though. That electric shock in his hand that he never felt with anyone else. Maybe it was fate, but maybe it was the bad kind of fate, the kind you should run from instead of running towards. Him dooming her to this life with him because she can’t see that he’s toxic for her and she’s still trying to save him anyway. 

He no longer remembers the reasons he did what he did. He remembers wanting to help his brother and his family but that doesn’t really justify the decisions he made. It’s not their fault that he chose to do what he did; he can’t pass the blame like that and it wouldn’t be true anyway. It was something inside him that made him say yes when it should have been no. He can’t see the turn that made him go through with all those decisions when he knew it was wrong. Something in him made him do it, but he doesn’t know what. He knows he’s responsible for every single last thing he did, but now it has just become a series of things he did in his mind, something that is no longer connected to him but he has to spend the rest of his life paying back. Perhaps it’s just his brain compartmentalizing the truth though, hiding it from himself so he doesn't go crazy trying to undo all the bad things he did in his head every night. 

She can see him struggling to believe her words, struggling to let her love him. She gives him a sad smile. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “I love you anyway.”

He doesn’t deserve her, but he’s trying to earn it. 

He can’t say he loves her back to her because he hasn’t earned the privilege yet, but he kisses the center of the palm of her hand and presses it to his heart so she knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points for anyone who knows the Zooey movie where the "your aura is purple" line is from. :)


	8. Accused

He’s been working at The Griffin for three years as a dishwasher. Jess thinks Mike will give him a promotion soon, but Nick thinks that is too much to hope for. He doesn’t want to hope for something that is never going to happen, doesn't want to get Jess’s hopes up for something just to let her down. He can’t help dreaming about it sometimes though, working his way up to owning his own bar again. He’d even be okay with just being a bartender in someone else's bar for the rest of his life. He always liked the chemistry of it, being able to impress people with his knowledge of esoteric alcoholic beverages, trying to match people’s personalities to their drinks, listening to people tell him about their secret selves because everyone always tells the bartender everything. 

\---

One day Mike pulls Nick into his office right after his shift ends and Nick’s heart jumps into his throat. _‘Jess was right,’_ Nick thinks. _‘It’s finally going to happen. I’m going to be able to go home tonight and tell her I’m not just a dishwasher anymore.’_ But then Mike accuses him of stealing. The register came up $500 short at the end of Nick’s shift.

“I didn’t do it, Mike,” Nick says. His eyes plead with Mike to believe him. 

“I know you did it, Nick. You should just confess now and make it easier on yourself. I’m calling the cops either way.”

Nick starts to sweat. His throat is tight, his stomach in knots, his heartbeat loud in his ears. They’re going to send him back.

“I didn’t do it,” Nick repeats. He watches stony-faced as Mike calls the cops on him.

He didn’t do it, but Nick knows no one believes him. He just has to sit there and take it; he can’t defend himself because everyone knows he did it before. 

The cops come and they cuff him. They make him do the perp walk out through the bar to their police car with all the patrons staring at him. Nick hears them whispering, wondering if he robbed another bank, if he murdered someone again. They put him in the back of their police cruiser and drive him to the police station for booking.

\---

His probation officer, Big Bob, meets him at the station. He has that disappointed look on his face. Ever since Big Bob has met Nick, he has always known him to be quiet, polite, and respectful. He has always followed the rules of his probation, always arrives on time for his weekly visits to Big Bob’s office, goes to all his probation-ordered therapy sessions, comes back clean on every single drug test. He goes to work and stays out of trouble. He doesn’t have the deeply entrenched anger at the world that most felons do, doesn’t complain about the bad hand he’s been dealt in life. Big Bob sees how hard Nick has been working to get his life together and he was rooting for him. He knows Nick’s whole bloody, violent story. The media tried to make Nick into some kind of monster, but Big Bob can’t reconcile that person with the person he sees every single Friday sitting across the desk from him in his office. They didn’t seem like the same person at all, even though Big Bob knows all the details were true. Big Bob knows criminals. He's been a probation officer for over 20 years; he can identify the truly remorseful, reformed criminals from the lying scumbags from a mile away. Nick always seemed like a genuine person to him. Big Bob thought Nick was a good kid who got mixed up in some bad shit and deserved a second chance.

Nick sits beside Big Bob at the police station and says, “I didn’t do it,” once, quietly, looking down at his feet. Big Bob doesn’t say anything back to him; he’s heard it all before. Even the good felons are still felons. Sometimes it’s just too hard for people on the Outside once they’ve been Inside. It’s human nature, really. Or rather, science. _Like attracts like._ People can’t help being what they are. 

\---

Nick uses his one phone call to call Jess. Right before he dials, he gets an image of Jess in his head. _Nick was supposed to come home for dinner at 5PM. Now it’s 6PM and she must be worried sick. She would be sitting there at the kitchen table wringing her hands and watching the door. At first she would try and convince herself that he was just running late because he got held up at work or there was traffic. But as the hour dragged on and it got later and later, she would think he got in an accident on the way home, a car-jacking, maybe a mugging, an incident in the bar with some of the drunk patrons, a fight, a stabbing. She would rush down to the bar to find him, but Nick wouldn’t be there. He wouldn’t be anywhere Outside anymore. He wouldn’t be coming home ever again._ Nick takes a deep breath and dials Jess’s cell number. 

\---

Jess rushes to the police station. When she sees him, Nick sees a flash on her face where she thinks he became who he was before, but it quickly passes. She believes him when he tells her he didn’t do it. She talks to the officer at the front desk about posting bail so Nick doesn’t have to spend time sitting in a jail cell before his court date, but Nick tells her to save her money. A felon convicted for armed robbery going up against an embezzlement charge? He doesn't stand a chance. If he’s going back to prison either way, he doesn’t want to drag out a long goodbye with her. It would be torture to go home and pretend he wasn’t going back to prison, to sit there in their apartment or lie next to her in bed and just count down the days until they take him away from her again. He’d rather just rip off the damn band-aid. He’ll tell her not to visit him in prison this time, to move on with her life without him. She gave 20 of her Outside years to him; he doesn’t want her to give him 20 more.

The officers come over and tell him to say his goodbyes before they take him to jail.

Nick shakes Big Bob’s hand and says, “Thanks for trying to help me.”

He turns to Jess. Tears are streaming down her face; he wipes them away with his hand. He wraps his arms around her and hugs her close to him. “I’m sorry, Jess,” he whispers into her hair. 

Tearfully she says, “I love you, Nick. I know you didn’t do it. If they send you away for this, I’ll still come visit you as much as I can, just like before.”

He steps back from her so he can see her eyes. “Don’t do that, Jess. If you love me, don’t do that.”

Her large blue eyes are filled with pain at his words. He’s sorry for hurting her, but he thinks it’s better to hurt her now than later. Better to make her leave him now rather than 20 years down the road when she has wasted 40 years on something broken that was never meant to be fixed, even by someone as fundamentally good as her. 

He cups her face and kisses her fiercely before he says, “I love you, Jess.” _The first time he has ever said that to her._ “I just wanted to tell you that in case I didn’t get a chance to later.” She starts sobbing. “Forget about me and live your life, Jess. Be happy.” 

He pries her arms off of him and walks toward the arresting officers. They cuff him again to take him to jail. Just as they are walking out of the station, an officer walks in and stops them. They caught the real thief, one of the new bartenders with a drug problem. They take the cuffs off of Nick and he is free to go, just like that. 

Jess runs to him and throws her arms around him, hugging her to him. “As long as you’re alive, you still belong to me, Nick. If you love me, don’t send me away from you again. Don’t tell me to leave you because I’ll still be down there with you every single day, even if I never see you again.”

He crushes her to him. His face is damp against her shoulder.

\---

They never apologize to him for their mistake, for almost taking 20 more years of his life away for something he didn’t even do. _Once a thief, always a thief. It’s just a matter of time._

He goes back to working as a dishwasher at The Griffin and everyone just pretends the whole ugly incident never happened.


	9. Lifeline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****Trigger warning for suicidal ideation.*****

Nick ends up losing his job a month later anyway.

\---

Nick is in Mike’s office picking up his paycheck. Mike hands him the check and then says, “I’m sorry, Nick. We’re going to have to let you go.” 

Nick looks at Mike in dismay. “What did I do wrong, Mike?”

“It’s just business, Nick,” Mike says in an impersonal tone of voice.

“Can you please just tell me the truth, Mike?” Nick pleads.

Mike looks down at the ground and mutters, “My niece is home from college and needed a summer job. I told her that she could work here.”

 _'Of course,'_ Nick thinks. _'Someone with a bright future who deserves this job more than me. But who’s going to give another job to a convicted felon?'_

“I need this job, Mike," Nick begs desperately. "Can you just give me a pay cut? I’ll work extra hours. Do you need someone to sweep the bar? Scrub the toilets? Be an extra bouncer? Stay late to close every single night? I can do all of that too and you don't have to pay me anything.” 

“It’s just business, Nick,” Mike repeats. 

Nick starts hyperventilating. “I’ve shown up for my shift every single day for three years. I've never been late, not even that time I got hit by a cab crossing 6th Street during rush hour. I've never even taken a sick day.” 

Mike starts looking nervous. Nick doesn’t know why Mike should be the one who is anxious when Nick’s the one who is losing his job. Nick looks toward the office door and sees the bar bouncers, Greg and Matt, standing outside peering in at them through the glass window. He feels sick and sad.

Nick calms himself down. “I’m not going to hurt you, Mike,” he says in a quiet voice.

He takes off his work apron. He places the apron and his bar keys on top of Mike’s desk.

“It’s just business,” Nick echoes in a flat voice. He walks out of the back office and out the front door of the bar. 

\---

He’s standing out on the sidewalk in front of the bar. He knows he should just go home, but he can’t go home and tell Jess that he just lost his job. He starts walking aimlessly into downtown LA. 

\---

He’s walking along the pedestrian path on the Colorado Street Bridge. Cars whiz past him, everyone else in the world leading productive lives headed to somewhere better. Nick pauses on the bridge to look out at the scenery; it’s a pretty spectacular view. The sun sits low in the sky and there are a smattering of cumulus clouds streaked gold by the late afternoon sun. He can see the lush greenery of the distant mountains in the haze of the horizon. He looks down at the treetops below him, the dry riverbed of the Arroyo Seco, the solid stone barrier of the manmade dam. A forest surrounding a concrete jungle. Nick’s hands are gripping the bars of the fence surrounding the bridge. He gets the impulse to climb over the railing. He scales the fence and lifts himself over the railing. His feet are on the edge of the exterior ledge, his eyes fixed below him. It’s a long way down.

He hasn’t been afraid of death for a long time. He thinks if prison is inevitable, he would rather pick that other inevitability. He doesn’t think he can do it all again…go begging for another job, deal with rejection after rejection, come home every night and look into Jess’s eyes and tell her he wasted another day chasing an impossible dream because he’s _him_ and the world doesn’t need another guy like him in it. He can’t keep trying for a life that is always just out of reach. He doesn’t want to have to keep thinking about walking that narrow line between being Outside and going back Inside every single waking moment. 

He’s sad that he’s going to let Jess down. He wishes she didn’t believe in him. She really should have just ran that time outside the warehouse, shouldn’t have come back for him in prison. She thinks he saved her life, but she really saved his. If she hadn't been there, he would have been in the warehouse and died with his brother and father. He didn’t really deserve to be saved though. Everything good in him is overshadowed by all the bad choices he made, all the bad things he did. You're not good because you say you're good, but because you do good things and Nick hasn't done enough good things in his life. He's only done bad things so that makes him a bad person. He'll always be a monster wishing he were a man, an empty shell of a person wishing he were real.

He doesn’t know if he’s going to jump or not; he wouldn’t have minded if somebody pushed him. But something makes him turn his head and suddenly Jess is there on the bridge. Their eyes meet and he can’t jump if she’s watching him. He climbs back over the fence, back over the railing. 

She runs over to him. “What are you doing?” she yells at him. Tears are streaming down her face, but she doesn’t seem to notice. 

Nick shrugs and doesn’t look at her. “I don’t know, really,” he says quietly.

“Come home, Nick,” she pleads. 

And he does. He lets her take him by the hand and lead him home. 

\---

At home in the bed they share, he spoons her to him and he thinks about a world where he had always been good instead of twisted and bad and broken inside. 

He feels her warm solid form against him. He can hear her gentle breathing, feel her heart beating under the palm of his hand. She’s still here beside him grounding him to his life.

He keeps trying for her. 


End file.
